


Friends with Benefits

by DarkWitchOfErie



Series: Parkner Week 2020 [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Friends With Benefits, M/M, Parkner Week 2020, Time Travel Fix-It, Tony's only dead for a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25654885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkWitchOfErie/pseuds/DarkWitchOfErie
Summary: “He invented time travel!” “What are you talking about, Parker?” “Tony. He invented time travel in order to reverse the snap, right?” “Right.” “So why can’t we use it to bring him back?”The boys start a Friends with Benefits relationship in the wake of Tony's funeral. Along the way, they realize they're smart enough to re-invent time travel to save Tony and fall in love.Day 1:"2029? That's not a real year!" /time travel/future au
Relationships: Harley Keener & Tony Stark, Harley Keener/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Parkner Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860076
Comments: 11
Kudos: 253





	Friends with Benefits

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't get to participate in Parkner week last year, seeing as I didn't discover Parkner until after that week. So I'm pretty excited for it this year!
> 
> Also, with this week, I’m challenging myself to keep each chapter under 3000 but over 500 words. I have an unfortunate tendency to drift from the plot if I let myself write a one-shot for too long, so this is my way of trying to stay focused. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this!

They hadn’t really talked about it when it happened. It was after Tony’s funeral, after most people had gone home again. Peter hadn’t been able to leave the cabin, which May had been very understanding about. Instead, he stayed in the room upstairs that was technically a guest room, but which no guest had ever really stayed in. Rhodey had his own room for when he came to stay and so did Happy. Staring up at the ceiling without seeing it, Peter became suddenly aware that he was no longer alone when the bed dipped beside him. Expecting Aunt May, he tried to muster a smile for her. Instead, it was the other teenage boy who’d been at the funeral.

If someone were to ask them later who’d initiated their first kiss, they would both say it was the other. The truth didn’t matter so much to either of them right then. What mattered then was the feel of warm skin, work-roughened hands, soft hair, the madly pounding hearts in both their chests, and the feeling that, just for a little while, things made sense and they had some sort of control. Afterward, they lay curled up, naked, and facing each other as they drifted off to sleep.

Harley ended up moving into the cabin with Pepper and Morgan. While he’d been dusted, his mother had gotten lung cancer. His sister, in an effort to cope with the deaths of her entire family, had turned to drugs and died of a heroin overdose. Peter didn’t like being away from the cabin for very long. He felt sickeningly responsible for Tony’s death, like he could have changed it if he’d been faster on getting the gauntlet to where it should have gone.

Outside of the bedroom they’d started to share, the two boys behaved completely as one would expect them to. There were no lingering stares or touches, no kisses, no sign that they were anything more than friendly acquaintances. But once the bedroom door was locked behind them, that changed. There were no declarations of love, but screwing each other chased the various sorts of despair away for a little while.

One such night, a month after Tony’s death, as they were lying side by side trying to catch their breath, Peter suddenly sat straight up and gripped Harley’s thigh. “He invented time travel!”

“What are you talking about, Parker?”

Peter turned to look at Harley, who had sat up beside him. “Tony. He invented time travel in order to reverse the snap, right?”

“Right.”

“So why can’t we use it to bring him back?”

“Because they destroyed the machine after taking the stones back. Some nonsense about avoiding temptation.”

“Okay, yeah. But between the two of us, I bet we can rebuild it.” Harley practically jumped out of bed and grabbed a notebook off the desk they shared.

“We can’t tell anyone we’re doing this,” he sat back down, notebook and two pens in hand. “They’ll try to stop us. A deal, right now, Peter, to keep this completely secret and just between us.”

They stayed up until nearly dawn, drawing plans and writing formulas in the notebook. They left blank spots where they would fill in the research that Tony had already done, assuming they would find a copy of it. They fell asleep for a few hours then, after breakfast, went out to Tony’s lab and stayed there until dinner.

While working side by side, there were certain things that Peter couldn’t help but notice about Harley. He’d noticed his muscles before, felt them flex and quiver when they were in bed together. But it was different to see him actually working with tools in his hands. More than a few times, Peter found himself distracted from his own work to look over at Harley and watch the play of the muscles in his back as he worked on assembling the time travel platform.

Harley didn’t have the same problem, watching Peter didn’t distract him. That wasn’t to say that he didn’t find Peter physically attractive – he very much did. But there was something about the younger man that made Harley want to protect him from the world. He knew that, being Spider-Man, Peter was physically the strongest person he knew. He also knew that the other teen had been to battle. But none of that seemed to matter. Peter just seemed soft and sometimes, when he wasn’t controlling his thoughts, Harley wanted nothing more in the world than to wrap his arms around him and protect him from everything.

In the lab, they managed to find some normalcy and happiness. They laughed and joked together. They comforted each other with kind words and silent hugs when everything outside their little bubble got to be too much. They shared the stories of how they’d first met Tony, both of them small children and with a huge case of hero worship even though Harley hadn’t shown it at the time. And they learned more about each other.

Harley learned that, before the spider bite, Peter had been clumsy, often tripping over his own feet. He learned that even before the bite Peter had been the type of person to go out of his way to help someone. He learned that he tried to get along with everyone as much as possible but only had a couple people he could truly call friends.

Peter learned that Harley didn’t like to make friends, preferring to hold himself away from his peers so that he couldn’t disappoint them. He learned that Harley’s devil-may-care attitude was a way to protect himself so that when people left him, he wouldn’t be hurt by it. He learned that Harley’s greatest joy in life was his ability to build things, whether those things were useful or not.

They learned that they both found solace in the type of work they were doing, even before Tony’s death. It wasn’t so much that it was an escape for them as it was an interesting way to keep their hands busy and challenge their minds. They learned that, though the science they both preferred was different – Peter’s being physics and Harley’s being engineering – they could carry on in-depth, technical conversations with each other without having to explain what they each considered the ‘simple’ stuff. They both enjoyed sci-fi movies, and enjoyed picking apart the science of them when the mood struck.

They learned, without telling each other, that if they’d been asked to design the perfect person for them to spend the rest of their lives with, that person would look suspiciously like each other.

Finally, they were ready. They sat side by side on a bench, staring at the device that would allow them to fix this one event that had gone horribly wrong. They couldn’t save Peter’s uncle or Harley’s mom and sister. They couldn’t save Natasha. At least, they couldn’t do those things without severely damaging timelines and creating new ones. But they could save Tony.

Peter, in a slightly modified version of his Iron Spider suit, stood on a platform that was much smaller than the one the Avengers had used to retrieve the stones in the first place. But it only needed to be big enough to hold him and Tony. He looked over at Harley who was manning the controls. “All set?”

“Yeah. Whenever you’re ready, Harls.”

“Pete, I love you.” Harley pushed the button that activated the wormhole and dropped him in the middle of the battle.

“What the fuck?” Peter whispered to himself. “Who _does_ that?” He was hit from behind and forced himself to focus on the battle. He’d get back to Harley and he’d have Tony with him.

He did absolutely everything the same way he’d remembered it from the battle, counting on the confusion so that no one would notice there were two of him. He landed, winded and clutching the gauntlet, on the same out cropping of rock as Captain Danvers landed beside him. He passed the gauntlet off to her and said, “Use it.”

“What?”

“Use the gauntlet to destroy Thanos and his army. If Thanos and Dr. Banner can survive using it, so can you.”

“Peter Parker, I like the way you think.” With a grin, she slid her hand in the gauntlet and the nanotech readjusted to fit her hand. As she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, he darted away.

“Tony! Where are you?!”

“Here, kid.” His display lit up and showed him exactly where Tony was.

“Wait, what’s going on?” He heard the other him demand.

But it was too late. He crashed into Tony, wrapped his arms around him, and activated the time travel bracelet he wore. He and Tony traveled through the wormhole, clinging tightly to each other. They crash-landed on the pad in the lab.

“What the fuck was that, Peter?!” Tony demanded, standing up and stepping out of the suit.

Peter, however, turned to Harley. He grabbed the front of the other boy’s shirt and yanked him forward. “I love you too,” he grinned and kissed him.

“Alright, exactly what the FUCK is happening?”

“Hey old man, good to see you,” Harley pulled back from Peter and smirked at Tony. “Want the short version or the long one?”

“The concise one.”

“You invented time travel to save us. We remade it to save you,” Harley explained.

Peter went into a little more detail. “Originally, you used the gauntlet and got rid of Thanos and his army. But the power of the stones killed you. I went back in time, got the gauntlet to Captain Danvers, and _she_ got rid of them. But, in order for the timelines to sync up, I had to bring you forward, I couldn’t leave you there.”

“I died?”

“Yes. But not anymore. Wait, someone’s coming.” He tilted his head and listened. Sometimes, having enhanced senses paid off.

“Carol, what are you talking about?” Pepper was asking.

“I have two memories. One in which Tony snapped and died, and one in which I snapped and didn’t die, but he vanished. I need to know the truth.”

“Stop.” Peter heard Rhodey move, presumably to stand in front of Captain Danvers. “I have two memories of the battle too,” he said. “But why does that mean we have to interrupt Peter and Harley?”

“You heard May. They’ve been secretive and staying out here in the lab at all hours. You honestly don’t think they had something to do with this?” She flung open the door and the three adults stared in shock at Tony, alive and staring back at them.

“Uh…. Hi?” Tony looked a little confused on how he should react. Pepper sprinted across the lab and up onto the platform, throwing herself into her husband’s arms, Rhodey right on her heels.

Over the next few hours, all of their friends and allies called Pepper’s phone, asking about the duplicate memories. Everyone who could make it out, came to the cabin to see Tony for themselves. Tony, for his part, tried to adjust to the idea that for all these people he’d been dead for two months. Morgan, full of delighted confusion, sat curled up in her dad’s lap for the entire day.

Meanwhile, Peter and Harley went and sat on the end of the dock. They’d had a little time, and would have more later, to spend with Tony. Right then, they needed to figure out where they stood with each other. They sat quietly, fingers intertwined, and watched the water ripple from the wind.

“Pete –”

“Harley –”

They chuckled. “Peter, I really do love you,” he hesitated a little and Peter felt his heart sink in his chest.

“But?” he asked softly.

“But I don’t know how much of our feelings for each other are because of what we’ve been doing. The stress and forced closeness and all.”

He thought back to the brief conversation they’d had about first loves and how Harley had thought he was in love with a guy back in Rose Hill. Then he figured out that he loved the _idea_ of a steady boyfriend and not the guy he was dating. He figured that was enough to make anyone nervous about their feelings. “Maybe. But we don’t have that situation anymore. So, let’s figure out how we feel now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You free this Saturday?”

“You know I am.”

“Wanna go on a date this Saturday?”

Harley chuckled and bumped Peter’s shoulder with his. “Yeah, sounds good.”

“Boys!” They turned to see May shouting for them. “Come on, we’re having cheeseburgers and cake!” Still holding hands, they made their way back up to the cabin.


End file.
